


Look Inside

by scheidswrites



Category: Unspecified Fandom
Genre: Max's Haunted Palace 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 07:21:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27129838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scheidswrites/pseuds/scheidswrites
Summary: Oct 21 Prompt: "You should have made sure I was dead."
Kudos: 3
Collections: Max's Haunted Palace 2020





	Look Inside

Lisa was still fairly young, only in her fifties, and perfectly healthy as far as either of them knew. She ate healthy and exercised, attended regular doctors visits, and didn’t have a family history of cancer or heart disease. Michael should have been the one to go first, they both knew that. He was the one with high blood pressure and the history of lymphoma on his mother’s side.  
But when he came home from the store, shopping bag in one hand and gallon of milk in the other, he found her in a heap on the floor. Her body was already cold, and the eyes of the woman he’d been married to for thirty-one years were glassy and vacant. She was dead.

Their son, Christopher, came back into town as soon as he heard. When Michael opened the door to his knock, they collapsed on one another. He held his son like he was a child again as they wept, standing in the open doorway.  
Chris stayed in the spare bedroom and helped with the funeral arrangements. Michael could never have done it all without him, and was glad of his presence in the house. He didn’t want to think of when Chris would leave again, and he would be left in their home--his home--all alone again.

The funeral was a blur. Michael was distantly aware of it all, as tears steadily stained the front of his suit jacket. Lisa would have loved all the flowers. Someone had selected bouquets of pink roses: those had always been her favorite. “You picked out those roses, Dad. Remember?” Chris said.  
The part that stuck out to Michael most was the casket. The polished wood shone, not a speck of dust on it. A collage of photos of Lisa rested on an easel next to it. She was meant to be in there, his wife, his other half. But the lid was shut tight. He knew she had wanted a closed-casket funeral. She wanted to be remembered as she was in life, not as a dolled-up corpse, he knew that. But was she really in there? Was she laid out neatly in her favorite dress, hands folded and eyes shut? What if she wasn’t in there at all?  
Michael tried to tell himself that it was just paranoia, just grief, but his mind kept returning to that casket. Like sharks circling a sinking boat.  
He wanted to look inside. Just a quick glance, to set his mind at ease. But the service marched on efficiently, and he was always surrounded by well-wishing family and friends, and his water-logged brain couldn’t think of a way to ask the parlor staff to just crack open the lid for a moment. And then they were at the cemetery, next to the open plot. The pastor was reading something aloud, the glinting polished casket was laid out next to the hole, and soon he would have lost his chance forever.  
He felt frozen in place, though the sun was shining and the day was warm. He was sweating in his suit. The open grave gaped like a hungry throat, waiting to swallow his wife deep into the earth. Was it really six feet deep? It looked much, much deeper than that.  
He watched, from a distant place far behind his own eyes, as the casket was lowered slowly into the grave. Chris’s hand gripped his shoulder. He heard, far away but thunderingly loud, the thump of the first mound of dirt falling on the casket lid. He might have screamed if his throat was not clogged with tears. They stayed until it was done, and a smooth slightly raised mound of earth was left in front of the headstone.

Christopher left a few days later. He had to get back home to his own responsibilities, but he promised to call and encouraged Michael to come visit him soon. To get out of the house, he said.  
And the house was empty, as empty as he’d feared, once Chris was gone. As soon as his taillights vanished around the turn, Michael could feel the weight of the house’s silence pressing on his ears. The clock in the living room ticked and the dishwasher hummed, but there was no sound of life. None of Lisa’s off-key humming, no click of her knitting needles, no clattering or swearing as she hunted through cabinets and drawers for this-or-that thing.  
He didn’t realize he was sitting on the couch staring off into space until it had grown fully dark around him. Night had fallen and he had been blank, numb, for hours. He plodded to the bedroom, dressed down, climbed into bed, and fell asleep.

He awoke some time in the night to the feeling of the other side of the bed shifting. The springs creaked slightly as Lisa sat and leaned over to him. He felt her cool hand brush his forehead. “Mike? Michael, baby, you awake?” She whispered.  
He mumbled an affirmation into his pillow.  
“I need you to wake up, baby. I need to talk to you.”  
He woke up in the morning, sun shining weakly in the window. He rolled over to her but her side of the bed was empty. The blankets were undisturbed. It was a dream. He didn’t share this bed anymore. He was alone.

The next night he laid awake, staring at the bedroom ceiling. He didn’t hear her enter the room, but he felt her weight shift the bed again.  
“Hon? Are you awake this time?” she asked.  
He looked over at her. She was in her favorite dress, her hair neatly styled. “Yes,” he said.  
She reached her hand out to him, and he took it. It was warm. Her nails were painted her favorite shade of light pink. “Why didn’t you look inside?” she asked. Her voice was light and calm, curious. But his blood chilled.  
“Baby, I--”  
“It’s so cramped,” she said, voice tearful. She wasn’t looking at him; her eyes were fixed on some distant point. “You know I’ve never liked cramped spaces, not even elevators. Why did you let them put me in there, Mikey? It’s so dark and I can barely move--”  
He sat up, reaching to her. “Lisa! I’m so sorry--” But as soon as he sat up, she was gone.

That afternoon he was washing a casserole dish, one of many, when he heard her footstep in the kitchen doorway. He shut off the water and turned to her.  
Her hair was coming out of its neat twist and a film of sweat stood out on her brow. As soon as he looked at her, she collapsed into sobs. She covered her face with her hands as her shoulders shook. Her nails were chipped, the paint flaking off.  
He rushed to her and held her shoulders. “What’s wrong?”  
“You should have made sure I was dead!” she wailed. She looked up from her hands, eye makeup smudged with tears. The strength left him. His arms dropped from her shoulders. “It’s so dark! It’s so hard to breathe and I can’t get out!”

He came to hyperventilating, standing alone in the kitchen. He had vomited on the kitchen floor. He didn’t remember doing it, but the sour taste clung to his mouth. He cleaned up and took the trash out to the curb.  
When he walked back up to the house she was standing in the shadowy recesses of the garage. She rushed at him, hair undone, dress dirt-stained. Her fingers were bloody as she gripped his face, tight and cold. “You should have made sure I was dead!” She screeched. Bloodshot eyes bored into his from behind her tangled hair. “I’m trapped down there alone and it’s YOUR FAULT!”

He could feel the blood from her hands drying stickily on his face as he threw the shovel in the back seat and got in the car. His legs were wobbling and unsteady. The daylight faded as he drove to the cemetery.  
The gate was locked, but it was only meant to keep out cars. So he parked, grabbed the shovel, and climbed over it easily. His feet knew the way to her grave. The mound of dirt was still fresh, and there was just enough light left to see her name on the headstone.  
He dug, one grueling shovelful at a time. His breathing soon turned ragged, and the muscles in his arms and back shook. He was out of shape, he knew. He should have exercised more often like she told him to, should have gone to more of those fitness classes at the gym with her. But when he faltered he felt her hands grip his shoulders. Her cold breath tickled the hair on the back of his neck and the shell of his ear. “Hurry,” she moaned. “I can’t breathe. There’s dirt in my mouth. There’s dirt in my nose. Hurry…”  
Michael collapsed when he could dig no more. There were blisters blossoming on his hands from the shovel. His muscles trembled with fatigue. He’d left home without changing out of his slippers and his feet were cold with damp and mud. Mud soaked into the knees of his pants as he looked around himself.  
The moon was out, and in its light he could see how little progress he had made. The yawning earth that had swallowed Lisa so readily was gritting its teeth firmly against him.  
But he couldn’t leave her down there! He couldn’t let her suffocate all alone. It was his fault she was buried. She hadn’t really been dead when he found her crumpled on the floor. He should have checked. He should have known better.  
His sobs were frail and dehydrated as he scooped at the dirt with his hands. He scraped at chunks of packed clay with his fingers, not caring when it stuck under his nails. One slow handful at a time as he sat slumped in the ground.

Michael awoke in the hazy dawn light to a face peering down at him. His muscles burned as he shifted from the position in which he had collapsed in exhaustion. He had fallen asleep right over her! He had lain there while she choked to death just beneath him!  
“Help me!” Michael called up to them, voice hoarse. “We have to get her out of here!” He grabbed the shovel with stiff hands and resumed digging.  
The person said something that he didn’t catch.  
“She’s suffocating!” He didn’t even turn to look at them, just waited to hear their weight landing beside him to help him dig. Were those vibrations he could feel through the dirt? Was she pounding on the coffin lid, trying to get out? “Lisa, is that you? Can you hear me? I’m coming, baby, hold on!”  
The person was talking somewhere above him. A man’s voice, somewhat familiar. He ignored it and focused on scraping out shovelful after shovelful of dirt. Then he did hear the sound of a person landing in the hole beside him.  
“Good. Help me dig, we’re so close--” he said, as a hand grabbed his arm and pulled him around.  
It was one of the employees from the funeral parlor. The funeral director, maybe. He wasn’t in a suit this time, but Michael recognized his face.  
“Let go of me. We’re wasting time!” Michael said and wrenched away, but the man grabbed him firmly again by the upper arms and looked him in the face.  
“Look at me,” the man said. “You called the ambulance. You saw her in the morgue. I prepared her body for burial myself. She’s been buried for more than a week. She is not alive in there.”  
“You’re wrong!” MIchael yelled. “She told me! She’s choking on dirt and she’s always been so claustrophobic, I have to let her out of there!” He tried to pull away again but the director’s grip was firm and there was nowhere to go in the small space.  
“What do you want to see in there?” the director asked. His voice was calm, his gaze steady. “What will bring you peace? Do you want to see your wife’s decomposing corpse? Freshly scraped nails and bloody knuckles? Or do you want to see her peacefully laid out, and know you disturbed her rest for nothing?”  
“I…” Michael said. The remaining inches of soil below him were dreadfully quiet.  
The man let him go. “Make the choice you can live with,” he said. He turned away and pulled himself deftly back up to the surface. Michael thought he heard him talking to someone else.  
He knelt back down and brushed away the remaining dirt. The lid of the casket still shone with polish when he wiped away the grime. He leaned forward and pressed his ear to the cool wood. It was silent.

**Author's Note:**

> First draft. Is there a way to indent paragraphs?


End file.
